Paul Theroux - My Secret History

He looked as though he was going to cry.

“I have to write an essay on that for tomorrow,” he said. “Four sides of foolscap. I haven’t even started.”

Then I remembered how I had been sententious with him and said, The first thing to understand is that time passes , and I said, “Maybe I could help you with your English.”

“I don’t want help,” he said. “I just want to get it over with.”

He drank his tea in silence, the moment passed.

“I’m hoping Mum will come with me to India,” I said. “Do you wish you could come?”

“Why do you ask me that, when you know I have to stay here and take these exams?” he said, being logical again in a way that shamed me.

“I never took exams like that in the States,” I said. I thought of myself at his age, of my rifle, of being an altar boy at St. Ray’s, of Tina Spector at the Sandpits, of three funerals equals one wedding; of the whale steaks a few years later. “I wish you didn’t have to.”

He clawed his tie and said, “Then you shouldn’t have sent me to this school.”

His expression was of someone who has been double-crossed. He had been trying to please me in studying hard. What right did I have to undermine him by insincerely wishing it otherwise? He was truer than I was.

He said, “What does Manichaean mean?”

“Something to do with duality — seeing that good and evil are mingled,” I said. “Good in the spirit, evil in the body and material things. Something like that.”

“Where does the word come from? Is it Greek?”

“From the name of the prophet — Manes. He was a Persian who kept being visited by an angel whom he realized was his double. He was also a painter. He was killed. His followers fled to central Asia. Why do you want to know?”

“It was one of the heresies that the Papal — oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter,” he said, and pushed his cup and plate aside and put himself out of my reach. “I have to go back now. Thanks for the tea, Dad.”

We left the cafe and I had the sense that the owner was staring at me, as though I was a pederast.

Jack said, “You don’t have to go all the way back with me.”

Was he embarrassed or ashamed of me? I didn’t know for sure, but I guessed he was. We passed a shop window selling clerical vestments and in the reflection I saw Jack dressed like a mortician and myself in the drizzly monochrome of London dressed like a cowboy, with wild hair. No wonder Jack felt conspicuous.

I walked with him to the large stone archway, which was a side entrance to the school, and Jack hesitated. He didn’t want me to go any farther.

I said, “After you’ve finished these exams you’ll be through with school. We’ll go to the States and have fun. You can take driving lessons.”

He looked up excitedly for the first time that afternoon and said, “I can hardly wait. I really want my license. Will you let me drive your car?”

“You can have my car, Jack,” I said. “Anyway, I’ve got two of them.”

Then I saw him behind the wheel, driving away and vanishing on an American road.

He looked energized, still pale and tired but with spirit in his eyes, the vitality inspired by wanting something, even if it was years away. His wet hair was plastered against his head.

“Thanks for the tea, Dad,” he said. “It’s really good seeing you.” He was smiling — thinking of driving a car.

I could not restrain myself from taking him in my arms. I hugged him — he was so thin. He stiffened slightly in surprise but he allowed me to hold him. Then I kissed his cheek, and in the way he returned the kiss I sensed the affection that I had not heard in his voice. He was like me and so he had a horror of revealing it.

“I’m sorry I’ve been traveling so much.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “As long as you come back.”

He picked up his briefcase and passed his fingers through his wet hair.

“But when you were away Mum was depressed and quite upset,” he said.

“I think I know why.”

“Please don’t tell me,” he said, and I knew he feared having to bear the burden of knowing that story. It was a burden enough to be my son — to try to please me without being overwhelmed by me, without being a lackey. “Dad, I really have to go.”

He was suddenly self-conscious and urgent again. He said “ ’Bye” and broke away from me. Would he ever know how much power he had over me — how in my love for him I needed his encouragement and approval, perhaps more than he needed mine? I watched him until he got to the end of the walkway and had grown small, like a figure out of my past. It was still raining. I put on my old hat and went to my bicycle.

“Does it seem strange, going to India with another person?” Jenny asked in the taxi on the way to the airport.

I said truthfully no.

“I know how you prefer to travel alone,” she said.

I said nothing. I smiled at her. I was grateful to her for coming. I took her hand but she was too nervous to be conscious of the gesture. Her hand went dead when I touched it and she did not notice what I had done until I let it drop. She was agitated at the prospect of a ten-hour flight, worried that she might not have brought the right clothes, fretful that she had left inadequate instructions for her replacement at work.

“Imagine. India. So soon,” she said. “I’m going to be a little out of my element.”

“We’ll have a good time,” I said. “All I have to do is get enough for my article and then we can enjoy ourselves. Our only problem will be the heat. This month and next are the two hottest in India.”

“I don’t care. It’s been a horrid spring in London. I don’t mind missing Wimbledon, And it’s a good thing you didn’t insist that I go with you last month.” She was half talking to herself, fussing, murmuring, smoothing her skirt. “That would have been out of the question. Budget Day. The Chancellor had a few surprises for us, I can tell you.”

Jenny was an accountant with a large firm in the City, having left the bank which had been her first job. Her work was as remote from mine as it could possibly have been. Its remoteness and its obscurity perhaps made it bearable for me. I had very little idea what she did. It wasn’t tax. She analyzed corporate expenditure. I sometimes saw the results — her name on reports. And she saw mine on books. But she had never seen me write one, no one had, no one — not even another writer — knew how a particular book was written. It had nothing to do with fluency. It was a clumsy, messy, and mysterious process that was done in the dark.

Jenny did not have the severe look of an accountant. You might have taken her in her casualness for an art teacher or magazine editor. She was browny blonde. She dyed her hair so regularly with Born Blonde that I did not know what her natural color was now. Perhaps underneath it all she was going gray. She had greeny-blue eyes, and sometimes wore thick glasses and sometimes contact lenses. I hated knowing how a woman achieved an effect of stylishness or beauty; I did not want to hear about wires or makeup. I wanted to see the final result.

She seldom dressed fashionably, but she had conviction which was possibly a greater asset. Her clothes were large and loose, and she always looked comfortable. I had first been attracted to her by her looks, and she had not lost her beauty.

There was something in the way she sat, and in her loose clothes and big bag, that suggested she needed space — elbow room. She seldom held my hand, she recoiled slightly when I hugged her. If I touched her or took her arm she always smiled, and then her arm seemed to go dead. I often spoke to her and saw her smile; but she was not listening to me — she was smiling at something in her mind. She had a powerful memory and she sometimes lived in it, outside my reach. She reminded me of Jack in her seriousness. She was logical and at times very quiet, and those times I imagined her heart fluttering and her breathing very steady and that she was unaware of what was happening around her. She was intensely alert but not particularly watchful. She walked fast and had no sense of direction. She was defeated by the simplest mechanical object and always had trouble with so-called childproof caps on aspirin bottles. She laughed at the thought that she might have to apologize for her eccentricities. “That’s the way I am,” she said. She did not find fault with anyone who was different. Her own oddness had made her tolerant. But she could be very impatient.